Diagnosing Problems With Custom Domains: Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer
Whenever I answer a problem report which involves a blog published to a Google Custom Domain, I always start my answer with a Dig log. A Dig log tells me what's behind the behaviour of the Custom Domain. Having looked at what's behind the scenes, I look at the front scenes. One very common front scene is (guess what?)
Server Not Foundand I'll report to someone
Error 404
You have the well knownand to a select few that will be news.
"Server Not Found
Error 404".
Great, Chuck, what do I do now?but to many bloggers
Great, Chuck, tell me something that I don't know.So, how do you describe the old "404", so you can diagnose it?
For analysing the sequence of events that lead to the "404", and various other browser related events, I use the Rex Swain HTTP Viewer. This is a free (what else?) online service, that produces an online log of the contents of an HTTP conversation between a web client and a web server.
Here's a log from a recently observed "404", a symptom that we all know so well (and wish that we did not):
Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer
http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.htmlParameters:
URL = http://www.mydomain.com
UAG = Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.17) Gecko/20080829 Firefox/2.0.0.17
AEN =
REQ = GET ; VER = 1.1 ; FMT = TXTSending request:
GET / HTTP/1.1• Finding host IP address...
Host: www.mydomain.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.17) Gecko/20080829 Firefox/2.0.0.17
Connection: close
• Host IP address = 66.249.81.121
• Finding TCP protocol...
• Binding to local socket...
• Connecting to host...
• Sending request...
• Waiting for response...Receiving Header:
HTTP/1.1·404·Not·Found(CR)(LF)
Date:·Tue,·11·Nov·2008·20:00:30·GMT(CR)(LF)
X-Content-Type-Options:·nosniff(CR)(LF)
Expires:·Tue,·11·Nov·2008·20:00:30·GMT(CR)(LF)
Cache-Control:·private,·max-age=0(CR)(LF)
Content-Length:·142(CR)(LF)
Content-Type:·text/html(CR)(LF)
Server:·GFE/1.3(CR)(LF)
Connection:·Close(CR)(LF)
(CR)(LF)End of Header (Length = 253)
• Elapsed time so far: 1 seconds
• Waiting for additional response until connection closes...Total bytes received = 395
Elapsed time so far: 1 secondsContent (Length = 142):
<HTML>(LF)
<head>(LF)
<title>404</title>(LF)
</head>(LF)
<body·bgcolor="#ffffff"·text="#000000">(LF)
<h1>Server·Not·Found</h1>(LF)
<h2>Error·404< /h2>(LF)
</body>(LF)
</html>(LF)Done
Total elapsed time: 1 seconds
And as usual, I'll excerpt the most relevant portions of the display.
Sending request:
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.mydomain.com
• Finding host IP address...
• Host IP address = 66.249.81.121
Receiving Header:
HTTP/1.1·404·Not·Found
That's a simple example, and I'll add more shortly. You can make your own examples - the HTTP Viewer isn't complicated to use.
- Direct your browser to www.rexswain.com/httpview.html.
- Copy and paste the URL of your choice, into the "URL" window.
- Select "Text" for "Display Format".
- Hit the "Submit" button.
Given the HTTP Viewer, and a good Dig log, we are probably 50% of the way towards understanding any blogger caused problems. Now, Blogger caused problems may be another story.
But this is a start.
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2 comments:
another http watch service i use is http://www.httpviewer.net - its similar. You can also use mozila firefox plugings to do it too.
Thanks, Mike! The HTTPViewer looks interesting (though lacks IP address information, very useful with custom domain problems).
What Firefox add-ons do you use?
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